Facsimile (FAX or fax) transmission has become an increasingly popular and important communication method. While conventional fax transmission uses paper documents as the input to a specialized fax machine, direct facsimile transmission of electronic documents via a desktop-type computer is becoming very common. This has particularly occurred because direct fax transmission of electronic documents eliminates several steps, and hence several opportunities for the introduction of errors, in the transmission process. If desired, documents created on a computer can now, through electronic fax transmission, be transmitted, received, and reviewed without generation of paper copies of the documents.
Fax transmission software for electronic documents may be "personal," installed directly on a personal computer attached to a fax modem or apparatus, or may be accessible by several users via a Local Area Network (LAN) while actually being physically installed on a central server that is coupled to the fax modem or apparatus. In either environment, the fax transmission software must interact with both a computer operating system and the fax modem or apparatus, as well as be accessible to the user in a convenient and simple manner. To that end, it is particularly valuable if the fax transmission software can interact with, and be accessed through, the various document-generating application programs being employed by the user, such as, for example, word processing software, graphics generation systems, and spreadsheet applications.
Utilizing present fax transmission software, a user can generally fax a file created by a computer application program by "printing" it using a fax printer driver. The file is then faxed at the conclusion of the print process. Because the file is always faxed immediately, it is not possible to combine multiple files, particularly files created by different application programs, and have them transmitted in a single, compound fax. One solution utilized for this problem has been to have the application files automatically translated to image format, either at the user workstation or as a back-end server process. The translated files can then be combined manually into a single file for fax transmission. This solution has several major limitations, however, among them being the facts that not all application files can be successfully translated into image format, that the translation process tends generally to be very slow, and that the manual combination of files is time- and effort-consuming for the user, as well as being error-prone.
One alternate solution is to treat multiple files as multiple attachments to a single fax, with all files being sent in a single transmission at the final iteration of the attachment process. This type of feature is found in at least one personal fax product, Delrina WinFax Pro 4.0. When using the WinFax Pro product to create a multiple-file fax, it is generally necessary that the files intended for the fax transmission first be saved from the individual application programs into an attachment folder. See Delrina Win Fax Pro 4.0 User's Guide, March 1994, p. 3-27!. The files to be combined into the single facsimile transmission must then be manually "selected" a second time, this time from the attachment folder, in order to create an attachment list that is subsequently used by the fax driver to build the multiple-file fax. Files saved into the attachment folder remain saved and listed there until, and unless, they are manually removed. This means that this second, manual selection of the specific files to be sent in a particular fax must be made each and every time a compound fax is created.
Although retention of files on the attachment list can have certain useful applications, for example when the same file must be used in building a number of different fax transmissions, there are also several aspects of the procedure that may constitute a drawback to the user. Users may find it inconvenient to have to select all the files intended for the multiple-file fax a second time when they have already selected them via the application program. In addition, because the user must select the files a second time, there is a significant likelihood of either a file being omitted from the fax or an extra, undesired file being added to the fax, as well as a chance that the files will be combined into the fax transmission in an order different from the order desired by the user. The latter could cause considerable confusion, for example, in a situation where a text document or spreadsheet is stored electronically in several different files and those files are then combined in an incorrect order into the fax transmission.
A further complication is created by the fact that many computers allow files to have names consisting of only a very limited total number of characters, e.g. 8 characters before a period followed by only 3 more characters. This means that computer file names are often not particularly descriptive, and users frequently find themselves running the application in which a file was created in order to determine the file's contents. The products for creating multiple-file faxes that currently exist essentially require that the user remember the name of each file that is targeted for the compound fax, as this is the only way that the file can later be selected a second time to actually create the fax. Particularly if some files have not been stored in image format, the user may even have to resort to running the application program a second time merely to identify the files contained in the attachment folder in order that the correct ones can be combined into the fax.
The WinFax Pro product has, in fact, recognized this persistent problem by requiring that the user interact with an extra dialog box each time that a file is selected for faxing through an application program. This dialog box gives the user an opportunity to rename the file and to include descriptive information about its contents, so that the file can later be identified during the second selection process that is required in order to actually create and send the multiple-file fax. While solving the initial problem, this method creates extra work for the user, particularly in comparison to, for example, creating and sending the multiple-file fax directly from the various application programs in which the file contents can be simultaneously viewed. What has been needed, therefore, is a way to create and send a multiple-file fax directly from one or more application programs, without the need for either a second selection process or special file identification procedures.